


they tell you that you gotta have a heart of steel

by hypotheticalfanfic



Category: Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Fem!Lex Luthor, Multi, Origin Story, everyone's queer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Clark Kent, supremely normal young guy, goes to college, majors in journalism, befriends a TA and a classmate, suddenly discovers a secret about himself, and is generally confused. All the time. About everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they tell you that you gotta have a heart of steel

Clark slid into what seemed to be the last available seat in the cavernous classroom. The attached desktop, which was supposed to stay upright on its own power, clapped down with a loud smack as he tried to tuck his too-long legs into the narrow space between his seat and the row in front of him. The noise echoed, to his horror, seeming to bounce into eternity and ring forever. He felt his face flush hot, and looked down at the desktop; it wouldn’t lay flat thanks to his awkwardly bent knees, and his schoolbag was teetering precariously atop it, threatening to fall. 

Beside him, he heard a throaty chuckle. He turned to see who was laughing at him, and was struck dumb. She was beautiful: clearly shorter than him (like everyone he knew), curvy, big dark curls of hair swept into a messy bun on the nape of her neck. She had a round, tan face and freckles all over — they spread from her forehead down her neck and beneath the straps of her shirt, splaying over her shoulders like a cloak. “I’m tempted to say ‘Smooth move, Ex-Lax,’ but I don’t know that people actually say that anymore,” she said with a grin.

“Sorry?” He was confused.

“What?” She looked like she was laughing, even though he was pretty sure she wasn’t, not right then, not out loud, anyway. “Never mind.” She turned her face away and he was struck again by her profile, like something that belonged on a coin or a stamp or a relief in a temple.

“I’m, uh, I’m Clark, by the way. Clark Kent.” He held out one broad hand to her, and it didn’t start to shake until she stared at it like it was an eel, another smirk spreading across her face.

“That sounds like a porn name.”

His jaw dropped, and he felt his face go red again. “It’s not a porn name!” It came out louder than he’d intended, of course, because he was Clark Kent, after all, and given a social situation in which there was a way to screw it up and embarrass himself forever, he’d do so with alacrity. Story of his life. Face burning, he turned away from her and tried to hunch over the desktop and bury his head in his notebook. 

The instructor — or, as she clarified, the “TA who’ll be running this class, because your prof is both incompetent and way too busy to teach ducklings like you how to write complete sentences” — started talking then, and Clark scrambled to get down notes in his terrible chicken scratch.

Class took forever, it seemed, and she talked fast. Clark spent the entire hour scribbling, nearly forgetting about the beautiful girl to his right. Eventually, the TA handed thick sheafs of paper to the front rows in the room; shuffling and whispers filled the room, which had been dead silent, as the papers spread throughout. 

“Don’t forget,” she said, “you need to sign the form at the back of your syllabus and return it on Friday, right here, at my desk. And if you’re going to do an internship, which you should, and you haven’t already signed up, which is your own fault, come down here and we’ll work on it.” She smiled, a flash of white teeth between bright red lips, and said, “You’ll probably get stuck typo-hunting on the yearbook or fetching coffee for the Wildcat Watch, but you’ll have a place.” She waved her hands toward the exits in the back of the room, and a cacophony of scrapes and chatter almost gave Clark a headache.

“Well, Kent, I’d like to get through if your legs weren’t in my way.” The girl, the freckled one, was smiling at him — still kind of a mean smile, but he didn’t feel like she was mad at him, not like she’d been before. “Mind shifting those things so I can go get lunch?”

“Sure, yes, sorry,” he scrambled to gather his things and stand. He’d been right — he towered over her by at least a foot and a half. “Wait, uh, what’s your name?” It came out more bluntly than he’d intended, almost pushy, and he blanched a little.

She looked him up and down, one eyebrow cocked. “Lois,” she said, hooking a beaten-up messenger bag over one freckled shoulder. “I’m Lois Lane.”

He smiled, trying to banish the nerves threatening to set his ears on fire. “Nice to meet you, Lois.” As she walked up the steps and out of the room, he felt his cheeks flush red again.

“Out, out, damned freshmen,” the TA called to the room, which was nearly empty already. “Some of us have important things to do, you know.” She was pale, with long dark hair and a pointed chin; Clark hadn’t caught her name when she’d been speaking. He opened his mouth to ask it now, but she glared at him over her glasses and looked significantly at the nearest exit. He thought better of it and scampered out the door she’d indicated, immediately slamming into bottlenecked students barely moving through the halls. 

“Great start, Clark,” he muttered to himself as he headed toward his next class.

——

As he staggered back to his dorm room later, struggling with book-length syllabi and even bigger textbooks, Clark wanted nothing more than to fall on his bed and sleep for the next four years. Instead, of course, because luck was never, ever with him, he dropped everything in his hands trying to get to his access card. “Great,” he said, and crouched to start picking things up.

The oppressive heat hadn’t lifted, even as the sun had started to fall. August in Kansas was never comfortable, but this year’s weather seemed specifically designed to torture everyone. Clark could feel rivers of sweat trickling down his neck and soaking the back of the plain blue t-shirt he’d worn all day. “Told you this morning the sweater was a bad idea,” a reedy voice said. Clark peered up and saw his roommate, Jimmy, bending to help him pick up scattered papers. The wind picked up a bit and they had to scramble to get them all.

“Glad I listened to you,” Clark said as Jimmy shoved the last couple of papers into his arms. “I’d have cooked to death, I think.”

“Good rule of thumb,” Jimmy said, swiping his access card to open the doors and holding one open for Clark to stagger through. “Always listen to what Jimmy says.”

“Another good rule of thumb,” Clark laughed as they headed toward the elevators. “Talking about yourself in third person? Bad idea, much like the sweater.”

Jimmy continued to make self-aggrandizing comments (all in the third person), a sly grin spreading across his broad, freckled face.

Their room was on the third floor, in the middle of the hall, and felt tiny. Well, it hadn’t felt tiny originally: the long twin beds and small desks hadn’t taken up that much room, really. It was the other stuff: Jimmy’s mini fridge, his microwave, his TV and PS3 and XBox-something-or-other, his camera and all its accessories, his extra blankets and pillows and a seemingly endless pile of clothes threatening to spill out of the closet. Clark had brought a few changes of clothes, his books, and one three-foot bookshelf and not much else — his favorite framed photo of his family, a pennant from Smallville High (he knew it was a little corny, but he hadn’t wanted to show up without anything to hang on the wall), and the used-but-still-nice laptop he’d gotten from his parents as a graduation gift.

Clark nodded toward his own bed as they came in, and Jimmy tossed the papers and books in his hands down onto it. 

“Careful, Jimmy!” Clark said, hating how whiny he sounded even to his own ears.

“Sorry, Mom,” Jimmy replied, rolling his eyes. “Hey, I’m gonna be out of the room tonight, so, you know, do whatever. There’s some good shit on Netflix if you wanna watch, just—” his voice became muffled as he stuck his head into the closet.

“Just what?” Clark said, straightening out the papers that had been bent. “And you’re out of the room tonight again?”

Jimmy pulled his head out of the closet and shrugged off his sweat-soaked yellow t-shirt. “Just don’t watch anything stupid, okay, I don’t want it recommending, like, a documentary about fonts or something.” He pulled a clean (and much nicer) green shirt on over his head, and ducked into the bathroom they shared with the girls next door. “And you know how Chloe is, man, she’s got her own place,” he called, his voice echoing strangely off the tile. “Given the choice of here or there, can you blame her?”

Clark shrugged, then remembered Jimmy couldn’t see him. “Fair enough. Okay, well, have, uh, a good time? I guess?” Jimmy laughed. “And hey, that font documentary was actually really interesting. Did you know that Bauhaus—”

“Oh god, Clark, I could not care any less if you tried. Seriously.” Jimmy poked his head out, red curls falling into his eyes, and grinned. “You need to get laid. Or, like, go out or something. Fonts, man, seriously.”

——

“Hey, honey!” His mom’s voice sounded strange over the phone. He knew, academically, that Smallville — and his family — was only a couple of hours’ drive away. He could leave now and be there by dinnertime, with Cap drooling on his feet and Mom and Dad smiling at each other over the groaning table full of everything he liked to eat. But here, in a dorm room full of someone else’s stuff, a phone pressed to his ear, it felt like they were on the other side of the world.

“Hey, Mom,” he sighed into the phone, relaxing back against the wall. “How are you? Where’s Dad? What’s going on?”

She laughed, sounding tinny and only barely close enough to her real voice to be comforting. “Oh, hon, he’s fine — he’s out bangin’ on that old junk in the barn, probably wishin’ you were still here to hold the flashlight for him. I’m fine, too. Puttin’ my feet up like a Rockefeller and pretendin’ the dishes are washin’ themselves.”

Clark grinned. “You know, if you got a dishwasher, they could be. Washing themselves, I mean.”

“Why would I want to spend good money on a machine to wash dishes when I’ve been doin’ it on my own forever? It’s not like a tractor, hon, it’d be a luxury. And I don’t need that many luxuries in my life.” 

“Well, maybe I’ll buy you one when I get a job.”

“Mmm, maybe. Why don’t you get that job first and then we’ll talk about it, huh? How are you? How’s that roommate of yours, Timmy? Meet any nice girls yet?”

“I’m okay, just hot and tired. Jimmy’s my roommate, and he’s—” Clark looked at the other bed, which hadn’t been slept in once yet. “Fine. He’s out right now. I haven’t really met anybody yet, it’s been all talking about the syllabus and finding my classes and things.”

A companionable silence hung in the room and over the line. Clark loved this about his mother: she could just sit and let him be, let him think through something without ever making him feel hurried. Sometimes Dad felt awkward with silence, would chatter about K-State’s football program or rain patterns or anything just to fill up the spaces, but Mom never did. 

“I did talk to a girl in my Intro to Mass Communication class, though. They call it MassCom, or—” he paused. The other nickname for the class wasn’t polite. “Uh, it’s for freshmen, you know, journalism majors. She’s sorta funny. Lois, Lois Lane, that’s what she said her name was. We sat by each other and she kept teasing me, you know, but not in a mean way. More like she just talks that way, all the time.” He hadn’t meant to gush, but that was exactly what he’d done. So much for keeping it cool.

“She sounds like she’ll be a lot of fun, Clark. If nothin’ else, you won’t get bored sittin’ by her.” He could hear the grin on his mom’s face. All the women in his life — not that Lois was in his life or anything, he berated himself — seemed to be grinning at him, all the time, like they all had a secret they didn’t care to tell him and it was making them laugh inside. He should be used to it by now, he reflected, having grown up with his mom and gone to school with girls who smirked and smiled and generally seemed a million times more interesting and powerful than he would ever be.

“Pretty much.” He opened his mouth to start talking about the TA, but his mom hollered something incomprehensible away from the phone. A click echoed in his ear, and then his dad’s rough, warm voice. 

“Hey, son! How’s the college boy?”

Clark didn’t cry. It was close there for a second, and it made no sense (they were literally two hours away, and he’d been gone less than a week), but he missed them so much. “I miss you guys.”

“We miss you too, honey,” his mom said, sounding nearly as emotional as Clark felt.

His dad cleared his throat and said, “Saw the Professor today, Clark, he sends his regards. Says he hopes you’ll drop in on a colleague of his, guy named Potter in some kinda engineering.” A pause; Clark’s dad coughed discreetly away from the phone. “Mechanical, he thought, but he wasn’t sure. Said you’d be able to find him from all the smoke and noises in his lab.” 

The family laughed, and if Clark had closed his eyes it would have almost felt like he was home. “How’s the Professor? He finish that pocketwatch CPR machine yet?”

“Aw, you know the Professor’s inventions, they never work when anyone’s lookin’.” His mom’s voice was teasing, but warm: the Professor was an old family friend, and his quirks were part of his charm.

They chatted for a while longer, Clark promised to look in on the Professor’s friend, and then it came time to say goodbye.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll call tomorrow, okay?” He hated how young he sounded when he said that.

“If you need to, honey, that’s fine.” His mom’s voice was gentle, like it’d been when he’d been upset as a kid. “But we’re not goin’ anywhere, and you’re about to get real busy. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, Clark, you get some sleep and stay one step ahead if you can. Don’t go gettin’ buried in the first week. It’ll take you the rest of the semester to dig yourself out.”

“Okay, yeah,” Clark said, stifling a yawn. “Talk to you soon, anyway. Love you.”

“We love you, hon,” his mom said, right as his dad answered, “Love you too, Clark.” With that mingled sound in his ears, Clark snapped his phone closed and laid his head on his pillow. Within minutes, he was dead to the world, dreaming of running into the sunrise in corn taller than his head.

**Author's Note:**

> All titles from "Don't Give Up" - Noisettes


End file.
